I am not sure if this is the proper forum, but I always found very
helpful information here and I would like to have the advice of experts.
Just before new year (end Dec 2006), my internet provided (noos.fr) had
trouble with ftp, so that access to my web pages became very
problematic, mostly impossible. After 2 months and many unanswered
complaints, I decided to buy my own domain, subscribe with a different
host and transfer all my files to the new domain. I did this, leaving
the old site behind. Whenever access to my old site was possible, I
hastily added to the header of several of my old pages the META tag:
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="3; URL=http://dardel.info/newpage.html">
I checked that this had the desired redirection effect and was happy.
I have counters on some of my pages. Two months later, I realised that
the traffic of several pages was drastically reduced. As an example,
the traffic on my "virtual museum" pages that had between 300 and 600
hits per day between September 2006 and February 2007 dropped to 200,
then 100, and now I record only 10 to 20 hits per day. Needless to say
that the counter is on the pages in the new domain.
A few days ago, someone told me that Google hated this META "refresh"
instruction and was actually banning entire sites using this tag. Panic
on board. I try to find information on the internet and read several
articles on the subject, but couldn't get a definitive conclusion or
recommendation. Most articles gave alternative redirection methods, the
most popular one being the creation of an .htaccess text file with the
instruction:
Redirect 301 / http://www.mynewsite.com/
I followed the advice and created the corresponding:
Redirect 301 / http://dardel.info/
The problem is that my old site had a split structure, with independent
subdomains, as my provided noos.fr was giving to their subscribers only
20 MB of space per user (defined as e-mail addresses), with up to 10
such users per subscription. So my old site was divided into several
URLs:
http://mapage.noos.fr/dardelf/ (main pages, including main index and sitemap)
http://mapage.noos.fr/dardelf2/ (photos)
http://mapage.noos.fr/dardelf3/ (more photos)
and so on
I have tried to put an .htaccess file in each of those, but it does not
seem to work.
Can anybody give recommendations on this subject:
1) Is this Goggle ban of the sites with META "refresh" real?
2) Is the "redirect 301" method with .htaccess reliable?
3) Are there other methods?
Many thanks in advance for your hints
--
a desperate
François de Dardel
http://dardel.info/
Faber est suae quisque fortunae
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